Toppa Top 10: The Best Dancehall Albums

Words by Jesse Serwer, Sherman Escoffery and Edwin STATS Houghton—

Dancehall has always been, and always will be, a singles genre. Over the last two decades, only a handful of dancehall artists have opted to transcend the usual hits-and-filler format, and create proper albums in the rock-and-roll sense of the word. Originally released last year in digital-only format, Vybz Kartel’s Kingston Story was one such release: across 14 tracks made entirely with American producer Dre Skull, the Werl’ Boss crafted a hypnotic, cohesive LP worthy of being heard from front to back, over and over. While the album didn’t make the splash commercially one might have expected, it’s getting a second chance in the form of a Deluxe Edition re-issue out on U.S. label Vice Records this week. With that in mind, here’s nine more dancehall albums from the last 20 years/post-digital era that we still play all the way through.

10. Lady Saw, Passion (1997)

Stylistically, Lady Saw’s third album was all over the place, augmenting previously released hits like “Sycamore Tree” with duets with Beenie Man, Shaggy and Bounty Killer, while showcasing her range by dabbling in country and western, opera and lots more in between. But Marion Hall pulled it all off, making all these divergent sounds fit her bawdy dancehall agenda.

9. Busy Signal, Loaded (2008)

Arguably the most consistent deejay, in terms of quality, over the last seven or so years, Busy Signal has made a few good albums in that span but Loaded was far and away his best. Tracks like “Tic Toc,” “Unknown Number” and “Cool Baby” show an artist at the top of his game, squeezing his rapid-fire flow into all sorts of musical situations (global bass sounds, moody hip-hop, drum-less synth rumbles) and making it work every time.

 8. Sean Paul, Dutty Rock (2002)

After establishing himself with “Hot Gal Today” and 2000’s Stage One, the formerly baldheaded Sean Paul returned in ’02 with some lady-pleasing corn rows and a global outlook that was timed perfectly to buss dancehall to its greatest commercial heights. He promptly took over dancehall clubs (at least outside of Jamaica, where many were still resistant to this uptown kid with the Super Cat flow) and pop charts with hit after hit, touching on every point in the dancehall playbook from the weed anthem (“Gimme the Light”) to the dancers callout (“Get Busy”) to the gals dem (“Like Glue”) to the foundation re-lick (“I’m Still in Love”). But above all SP made Dutty Rock feel like an event itself, rounding things out with entertaining interludes that added to the vibe, instead of taking away.

 7. Buju Banton, Voice of Jamaica (1993)

This was the first glimpse into Buju Banton’s evolution from a braggadocious, self-centered teenage dancehall star into an international artist. As Buju held firm to his dancehall roots with songs like “No Respect” and “Vigilante,” he also displayed his emerging social consciousness with songs like “Willie” and “Tribal War”; then showed his versatility, on his combination with Busta Rhymes on “Wicked Act.” Buju also recorded some serious Lovers Rock combinations with Wayne Wonder and Beres Hammond and what we now realize was a soliloquy, “Him Tek Off.” By the time his dancehall peers caught up to him as a deejay, he had already graduated to being a reggae artist with his next album, Til Shiloh.

6. Beenie Man, Blessed (1995)

A top 20 album on the Billboard reggae chart, Blessed was the most consistent international dancehall album of its time, and proved why some people started calling Beenie Man the new King Of The Dancehall. A straight, get-up-and-dance type album, songs such as “World Dance” and “Modeling” became party anthems and even the conscious title song “Blessed” had people up and dancing to its fast tempo. “Stop Live In De Past” was the track that took the lyrical war between Beenie Man and Bounty Killer to another level, much to the delight of the dancehall fans around the world. This was not the album that you sat and listen to unless you were paraplegic .

5. Vybz Kartel, Kingston Story (2011/12)

Everything about Kingston Story told you this was a step in a new direction for Kartel, beginning with the tasteful, vintage-looking art direction depicting a dapper Werl Boss in skinny tie and slacks. One of his last major statements before his arrest on murder charges just a few months later, the album was produced entirely by Brooklyn’s Dre Skull, who recorded the entirety of the record, with the exception of their initial collaboration and hit single, “Yuh Love,” expressly for the LP. Musically, the LP showed a much wider range than many knew Kartel was capable of, from protest songs to heartfelt love tunes, and even a haunting piano interlude. But what stood out most of all when Kingston Story dropped in digital form last year, and still does upon its re-issue this week, is how seamlessly the material all blends together into a hypnotic whole.

4/3. Bounty Killer, My Xperience (1996) and Ghetto Dictionary: Art of War (2002)

Bounty’s Art of War wasn’t conceived as a concept album per se but it was organized along a single theme—it’s made up of all clash, or war, tunes—lending it a uniformity rarely heard in dancehall albums. Beginning, oddly enough, with one of the earliest album appearances by superstar hip-hop personality (and former pirate radio reggae DJ) DJ Khaled, Art of War is quite possibly the hardest, most thoroughly vicious dancehall album ever.

My Xperience, meanwhile, was a more diverse and well-rounded showcase of Bounty’s abilities, from the classic hip-hop collaborations with Raekwon and Rza, the Fugees, Jeru tha Damaja and Busta Rhymes and Junior Reid to the light-hearted and radio-friendly combination with Barrington Levy, “Living Dangerously.” But the heart of the record was still the war tunes that made Bounty Bounty.

2.Super Cat, Don Dada (1992)

Though in some ways less consistent than Super Cat’s ’80s-era Jamaican LPs his major label adventure Don Dada ranks among the classics of the genre. Not only did this set of songs establish Cat’s musical persona to the world, in many ways it did so for dancehall as well. The Puffy Combs and Salaam Remi-produced experiments with hiphop, which powered the album’s radio and video presence are landmarks on a number of scores (first appearance of the Notorious B.I.G., first usage of the term ‘bling, bling’, etc.) but also established a whole new sub-genre of badman talk over raw drum breaks. On the other end of the spectrum, “Nuff Man A Dead,” “Coke Don” and “Oh It’s You” are as menacingly melodic as any of Cat’s early reggae 45s. Forming a bridge between the two extremes are songs crafted with Heavy D’s input (“Big & Ready”; “Dem No Worry We”)–in some ways the most satisfying on the album. What truly unites the diverse riddims on Don Dada, however, is Cat’s unstoppable flow. An unlikely formula for crossover success—a lexicon of street cred (“Kingston, mi dere when Massop get shot”) impenetrable to non-Jamaicans, a relentless, never-take-a-breath chat that hardly left room for conventional hooks—proved to be the most enduring blueprint for dancehall hit making.

1. Buju Banton, Til Shiloh (1995)

Now, there’s some debate over whether Til Shiloh qualifies as a dancehall album, as it saw Buju rise above the hit-now immediacy of dancehall and grow into a Marley-esque fashioner of timeless reggae music. But even as it brought Niyabinghi drums and hip-hop remixes into the mix, dancehall riddims were still at the heart of Til Shiloh‘s pulse. As much as the album in its entirety is suited for soundtracking a long drive in the hills, it’s stacked with nuff tunes—“Murderer,” “Champion,” “Complaint”—that still mek the dance get ram.